


Will it please me when someone lights a candle and says my name

by Lestradesexwife



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It, Gen, obligatory mourning fix it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 05:47:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14743100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lestradesexwife/pseuds/Lestradesexwife
Summary: We all need to write the fic that gives us hope for part two. this is mine. I'm still mad and a bit in shock so it is unclear how much sense this will make.We were not ready





	Will it please me when someone lights a candle and says my name

It is horrifying, soul crushing, beyond comprehension 14,000,605 different possible outcomes and only one that isn’t. It isn’t even that those are just the options that are currently available to them. He’d gone into the past, reaching for anything that would give them an edge, there had to _something_ that he was missing. Something that would turn 14,000,605 empty futures into hope.

Taking Thanos off the board, before he has a chance to rise to power. Should be easy, cut him off before he even has a chance to propose his solution to his homeworld, kill him in the cradle. The eugenics project that should have died on a madman’s lips succeeds where Thanos failed, his homeworld flips a coin for survival and the cancer of it spreads throughout the galaxy. 

Trying again before Thanos lands on the idea of the Infinity Stones. The children take up their ‘Father’s’ mantle, only without the power to wield the Stones they resort to old fashioned mass murder. It takes longer, and eventually they are defeated, run to ground and punished for their crimes. But not before too many have suffered and died.

He tries millions of possible timelines, finds only darkness and despair.

Fine. If there is nothing that can stop them from getting to this point there must be something that can bring them clear through it. He scours the galaxy, thousands of timelines at a time. There has to be something he can do.

Home. Earth. At least there he knows where to start.

Hydra. Chop off all the heads at once. Destroy the original coven, and watch as the world he knows unravels completely. For all their evil, all the horrors they have unleashed on the world they are stupid, careful and hidden in the shadows. The power vacuum is filled by much more cunning men. Men who don’t feel the need to hide their schemes for power, simply reach out and take what they want. The Dark Ages never end, the planet is cleansed, ruthlessly and when Thanos arrives he finds them eager and willing to join his cause.

The Red Skull then, Hitler at least. But without them there is no Captain America, not a choice he would normally allow himself to make. Without the Captain there is no one to stop Thanos from taking the three stones on Earth, and no way for him to stand against Thanos on his own. He goes back, traces Rogers’ timeline, there has to be a way to bring about the same outcome without the genocide. 

Watching Rogers’ timeline he pales, there are so many near disasters, diseases that should have killed him… that would have if he wasn’t there watching over him. He actually has to break into the timeline several times. Once to give Steve the polio vaccine, and another to loosen the hinges on the door of the cab so that he can pick it up and use it as a shield. Too many times to count he creates bubbles around Bucky, hastening his step to arrive in time to rescue Rogers from himself.

 

So maybe then, if one Captain is good, surely more will be better? Erskine must be saved. The project must be allowed to continue and flourish. Only when Erskine is alive and more super-soldiers are created Steve gets shunted to the side, turned into a dancing monkey permanently. Barnes is captured, tortured and turned and then suddenly the Nazi’s have a super soldier program as well. The war tilts and sways out of control, unenhanced suddenly outmatched and ground beneath the boot-heels of the Red Skull. He drops his bombs and the planet mourns. When Thanos arrives all he finds is a smoking husk.

Barnes must be saved then. Steve can be placed with the 107th after the serum takes effect, Barnes can be spared the torture. Only then Zola uses some other POW in his experiments, until he finds one that is successful and manages to recreate the serum, and without the personal motivation of going to Barnes’ rescue the Hydra plot is never uncovered and then they have super soldiers. 

He grinds his teeth in frustration, flicking through the possibilities. Barnes is tortured and becomes a super soldier, is rescued and brings about the downfall of the Red Skull. An extra ammo clip in his pocket and he doesn’t fall from the train. He and Steve board the Valkyrie and together finish off the last of the Red Skulls plans. Peggy manages to talk them down, the plane lands safely and the Americans have the bombs. 

The Americans having the bombs is not an optimal outcome. 

Four thousand six hundred and fifty two attempts to spare Barnes from the fall, and they all end in some form of disaster. Although at least several hundred of those involve trying to bring Steve out of the ice early, but it is never safe to have those bombs in play. 

Which brings him to Howard Stark, and to Tony. If Howard is even a little less obsessed with finding Steve, if he even slightly draws closer to Tony, surely the two of them would be able to do great things. There must be a solution in the two of the greatest minds their generations.

A closer bond between father and son ends in an even more cruel twist. He wasn’t ready for the shock of Tony’s blood in the back seat of the family car. 

Stopping the soldier from killing the Starks isn’t an option. If he delivers the packages of serum, they fall into the hands of the Hydra agents inside Shield. The program is successful and America achieves her Manifest Destiny, wiping out all those who would stand in her way. The only comfort is that Steve is never found, and he sleeps in the ice long after Thanos has come and gone. Hydra has its tentacles so deep into the Manifest America that when he arrives they offer up the stones in their possession in exchange for a place amongst his children.

The arm of Hydra that controls the Winter Soldier is part of the foolish and scheming body that grew from the original coven. They horde the Soldiers, freezing them when they can’t control them, and try as he might he cannot prevent the split in the Avengers that comes with the revelation of Bucky’s murderous past.  
If it isn’t Bucky on that tape, it’s Natasha. Perhaps a small kindness for Howard, since she’s not a long lost friend. It turns out that Hydra can’t always control Bucky, even under all the layers of programming and electroshock. He waited until Howard and Maria were away from the house. Natasha catches Howard bringing the bags out to the car, and then because she is well trained she clears the house as well.

And then it is Bucky trying to stop Steve from killing Natasha.

There is a timeline where he screams himself hoarse. 

There’s no way to save Tony an ounce of the pain he goes through, his ridiculous Merchant of Death phase, his capture. He tries to have them skip over Ultron, but they need Vision. They do, he’d tried to hide the Stone in the Sanctum, Thanos had descended like an avenging angel and taken them all. Having one of the Stones able to defend itself, however briefly is better than not.

Saving Quicksilver is the only thing that seems to have no effect either way, so he does it. Nothing changes, the battle at the airport still happens, it still ends the same way. Only Wanda suffers less. He’ll call that a win. Pietro fights alongside them in Wakanda, is able to backup Vision in the forest, his actions alter the timeline slightly. But it still comes down to Wanda and Vision and her choice.

At the end of it all he’d like to have been able to warn Stark. He’d been through the timeline and heard Stark confess his fear. He shares it now, knowing that everything he could do is not going to be enough. 

He has to give up his stone, has to delay long enough that Wanda will destroy Vision, force Thanos to create a time loop, a sliver of time, a chance, a moment and a universe inside the soul stone where his half of the universe will be safe. He has to tell himself over and over that they won’t be dead. Not really. That it won’t be the same as Dormammu’s realm… they will hold onto themselves, there will be a lot of suffering, mourning… unimaginable mourning, on both sides. But it is temporary, fleeting and he’s set in motion the events that are necessary for them to come out the other side of this intact. 

If he believes in nothing else he has to believe in that one chance.


End file.
